Another Ghosting Issue/Frame Blending Dillema

[sanlyn]

Yes, you could. Try it and look at a few frames in VirtualDub. It adds extra pixels to top and bottom. The original borders at the edges will look about the same. Resize first, then add border pixels.

Be aware of cropping restrictions for certain colorspaces and interlaced/progressive. There's a short table of "Cropping Restrictions" at the bottom of this web page: http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Crop. The same page is in Avisynth documentation on your PC.

[hizzy7]

Should I be using RGB colorspace?

Thanks!

[sanlyn]

At the time you run QTGMC, the video is YV12. After running QTGMC and sRestore, it's progressive YV12.

[manono]

The inner image is 704x468, the encoded frame has 6 pixels top and bottom to get 704x480.

Why not just do a straight resize to 720x480 from the original 704x480, if you think it should be 1.37:1? Same dimensions, pretty much. Is it to take into account the overscan?

[hizzy7]

At the time you run QTGMC, the video is YV12. After running QTGMC and sRestore, it's progressive YV12.

There are cropping restrictions for VV12. It says Mod-2 on this site:

http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Crop

Does that mean I shouldn't be cropping now?

Ah! I understand now!

[hizzy7]

The inner image is 704x468, the encoded frame has 6 pixels top and bottom to get 704x480.

Why not just do a straight resize to 720x480 from the original 704x480, if you think it should be 1.37:1? Same dimensions, pretty much. Is it to take into account the overscan?

I tried that, and the image looked stretched out a bit.

[manono]

I tried that, and the image looked stretched out a bit.

You mean things look a little 'wide' or 'fat'? The same is true for 704x468 if you look at the unresized video. It gets resized at playback time after being encoded as 4:3.

Open the script in VDub, right-click the screen, and set it for 4:3. Then tell me it looks stretched.

[hizzy7]

I found it looked fat when doing a straight resize, but natural when I did Spline36ReSize(704,468)
AddBorders(0,6,0,6)

I will try your suggestion manono!

[sanlyn]

Yes, it looks stretched because it's being displayed as 720x480, not 640x480.

I have a lot of tapes with old 1.37:1 movies squished to 1.33:1. Jagabo once posted an explanation for this. I don't know if it happens during encoding or when; sometimes you see a difference and sometimes not. Sometimes there are no left-right pixels on many TV broadcasts and DVD's of old 1.37 or 1.36 films -- instead I see something cropped from the left or right and from the top, so titles and whatnot are not centered, and people have foreheads cut off -- but the image is full-screen because it has been zoomed up and cropped. Annoying. But many don't see a difference.

My DVD of the movie Shane has a few pixels of top and bottom border. The image within the frame, not counting borders, is 1.37:1. The borders are not usually seen because of overscan. But an older VHS of that movie had a zoomed, full 4:3 image that was cropped from the top and left on tape.

[manono]

I found it looked fat when doing a straight resize, but natural when I did Spline36ReSize(704,468)
AddBorders(0,6,0,6)

Then you have better eyes than I (or anyone else in the world) if you can tell a ratio difference of less than 0.3%.

Warner Home Video uses the full 720x480 screen for their DVDs of classic films with the Academy Ratio (1.37:1).

[sanlyn]

I know Warner does. They are 1:37:1 images in a 1.33:1 window. At least, they're supposed to be.

They look skinny to me. Not natural. I have a few retail VHS tapes with the same problem. I also have good DVD transfers of many of the same movies. The tapes look squished. Some of the tapes are zoomed and cropped along two borders.

And motion looks speeded up. IMHO. But they're hizzy7's tapes, so the O.P. should have what the O.P. wants.

[jagabo]

Judging by the wheel in frame ~1101 (of the video in post #54) the AR looks about right when the 720x576 frame is stretched to ~960x576. That would give it a DAR of about 1.667 (including the black borders).

[sanlyn]

Looks even closer (how did I miss those wheels? And I watched the m2v twice!). So the closest to that would be VistaVision or 15:9. At least the lady in the carriage doesn't look as if she's riding in a phone booth. And the horses don't look like ponies. At one time VistaVision was 1.5:1, and the Golden Ratio of the art world was 1.618. So somewhere in there is the correct frame size.

OK, off to the internet.

[sanlyn]

About the time this movie as made, many TV and theatrical films in japan were matted for 1.66:1 display. Some of them hit theaters where projector showed them at 1:75:1 (phooey). For a while the Japanese were using a widescreen format called Hi-Vision that was often 1.6:1 or 5:3 (which is still 1.66666). The physical film , usually 35mm, wasn't physically that ratio, but this is the way many movies were re-printed for theatrical release.

So if we can match jagabo's eye and make those wheels look round instead of like a crushed Mako toy, we might have something there.

At least I'm not totally crazy. Just a little bit.

[hizzy7]

I found it looked fat when doing a straight resize, but natural when I did Spline36ReSize(704,468)
AddBorders(0,6,0,6)

Then you have better eyes than I (or anyone else in the world) if you can tell a ratio difference of less than 0.3%.

Warner Home Video uses the full 720x480 screen for their DVDs of classic films with the Academy Ratio (1.37:1).

I am sure I must have made some kind of mistake. Avisynth is new to me and it is so complicated.

[sanlyn]

No, you didn't. You worked with what was there. Unencoded, lossless AVI doesn't have a "display aspect ratio." Its display aspect ratio, if it had one, would be the same as its frame size. The 720x480 AVI would display as 720x480. When you encode that AVI to MPEG, BluRay, DivX, whatever, those media can be assigned a display aspect ratio that doesn't necessarily match the encoded frame size ratio. For MPEG and BluRay, you can have only two display ratios: 4:3 or 16:9.

I don't know if you noticed, but your PAL m2v has a display aspect ratio of 4:3 (which is 1.33:1), but its encoded frame size is 720x576 (which is 5:4, or 1.25:1). What if you had a PAL DVD whose original image was 16:9? It would be encoded for PAL at 720x576 with a display aspect ratio of 16:9. What if you had a super-wide Panavision movie from, say, Stephen Spielberg. He shoots 2.35:1. How would it be encoded? For NTSC it would be 720x480 at a 16:9 display aspect ratio; for PAL it would be 720x576 at a 16:9 display aspect ratio. You might ask, how does a super-wide 2.35:1 movie fill a 16x9 screen? Answer: it doesn't. It would be letterboxed.

[hizzy7]

Here is another clip. I know its a bit bright, but I don't think its terrible (hopefully). Now, to get the AR right. I think its still an issue.

http://files.videohelp.com/u/183506/NUN%20NUN.demuxed.m2v

[jagabo]

Assuming 960x576 from my earler post is correct: after cropping away the black borders you're left with 916x566, a display aspect ratio of 1.617. That's closer to 16:9 than 4:3 so I would make a 16:9 DVD with a 720x480 frame size (I'm assuming you're making an NTSC DVD). 1.617/1.777 is ~0.91. So the movie should fill 91 percent of the 720 pixel wide frame, or ~654.9 pixels. Since YV12 video must use even frame sizes let's call it 654. So after cropping the black borders from the source video resize what's left to 654x480 and add black borders to fill out the 720 pixel wide frame required for DVD:

BilinearResize(654,480,18,2,-18,-8)
AddBorders(66,0,66,0)

I used BilinearResize() because the source already has oversharpening halos. The softer resize will reduce those a bit. But you can use any of AviSynth's resizers. I'm using the resizer's built in pre-crop ability to do the crop and resize in one step. You might consider using mod 16 borders -- at least at one edge, AddBorders(64,0,68,0). Or consider using my SoftBorders function:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/356474-Soft-black-borders?p=2245764&viewfull=1#post2245764

SoftBorders() will reduce DCT ringing and over-sharpening artifacts at the transition from picture to black border.

[sanlyn]

Ad for an NTSC DVD issue from Hong Kong. I'll believe it's "widescreen" when I see it, but some pics I'll post later might demonstrate that the original film was certainly wider than 4:3. On the internet, however, I've never seen any scene or video from this movie that wasn't 4:3. Some of the 4:3 videos look like widescreen cropped to 4:3. http://flkcinema.com/product.php?mid=2680

[Attachment 18576 - Click to enlarge]

When I saw this I almost fell over laughing. The eBay seller claims his product is a "rare, real, ORIGINAL DVD". GENUINE, Folks! Like new, but can't sell it as new because the seller opened it and watched it, and he cannot tell a lie. Honest Abe, this guy. Screaming in big caps and red and blue fonts. Has some captures claims to be made from this GENUINE dvd, like the one below. Sure, it's DVD -- you can tell by the head scanning noise along the bottom, right? R-i-i-i-i-i-ight. And look at all that genuine dvd chroma bleed, rainbows, and....shhhh, if you look real close you can see that yellow stain along the right border. All hallmarks of GENUINE (rare!) dvd. If that's DVD, it's one of crappiest ever issued. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ONE-ARMED-MAGIC-NUN-LUI-KEI-SEK-KIN-SIMON-YUEN-DVD-CHINESE-O...p2047675.l2557

[Attachment 18577 - Click to enlarge]
And we all know that Hollywood movies are shot at 4:3, just like the image shows.

[hizzy7]

That looks awful.

[sanlyn]

From he big m2v posted in #54 several hours ago: three images from the same frame. All are sized to 480 vertical dimension, but different widths to attain different aspect ratios.

A wagon wheel from the PAL m2v, as would be displayed at 4:3. Obviously not a round wheel. Rather a bumpy ride, even for those days (and you thought Toyota had problems!). A 4:3 frame from the original source would look just as egg-like. I think this demonstrates that the movie could not have been shot as 1.33333:1.

[Attachment 18578 - Click to enlarge]

Wheel at 1.37:1 aspect ratio. Okay, my guess was a bit off; this wheel is more round -- but no cigar. Looks as if it requires just a more outward stretch.

[Attachment 18579 - Click to enlarge]

Wheel at jagabo's suggested 1.66 image aspect ratio. Even closer to round, if a tad wide. The verticals spokes are a bit shorter than the horizontal. But it's a step closer. Of course there was earlier cropping and some original pixels are missing. So a correct image size for this flick is somewhere between 1.37:1 and 1.66:1 (recall that 1.5 was also being used in Japan back then).

[Attachment 18580 - Click to enlarge]

In any case, there's no way a 4:3 image accurately represents the original.

[sanlyn]

That looks awful.

Tell you the truth, it looks like a dead ringer for the VOB sample you first posted. Apparently a really bad copy has been making its way around the planet.

[hizzy7]

When I try Jagabo's frame size script I get a message saying: "avisynth error yv12 images for output must have a width divisible by 4". aiya!

[hizzy7]

That looks awful.

Tell you the truth, it looks like a dead ringer for the VOB sample you first posted. Apparently a really bad copy has been making its way around the planet.

I know its the same for sure, but it's not sell-able!

We got the same copy from the son of famed director Ken Russell.

[hizzy7]

When I try Jagabo's frame size script I get a message saying: "avisynth error yv12 images for output must have a width divisible by 4". aiya!

Is it wrong to make it BilinearResize(656,480,18,2,-18,-8)?

Thanks again!

[jagabo]

Is it wrong to make it BilinearResize(656,480,18,2,-18,-8)?

No. It's just a tiny bit wider. By the way, the script I gave was for the 720x576 PAL video in post #54, not the video in post #1.

But sanlyn could be right -- maybe 960x576 is a little too wide. Also, the wheel is very close to the corner of the frame. Lenses often distort the image near the corners. And the bottom portion of the wheel is obscured by the grass. I'd rather find something of known aspect ratio, bigger, and near the center of the frame to get a more accurate estimate of the true AR.

I was using this frame (1103 by DgIndex) because the side of the wheel is perpendicular to the axis of the camera (full frame enlarged to 960x576):



In the frame sanlyn used the wheel is pointed slightly to the side.

[sanlyn]

Yes, that frame is a better view. The pics I posted were all 480 in height, so the width never ventured into 900.

I wonder why the O.P. wants PAL. Or maybe PAL playback equipment is at hand. My OPPO can handle it, but not everyone will save $$ for 8 years to buy one of those.

Will get a closer look at the new upload later. That flicker in some scenes is severe -- luma and chroma levels are creating an overload in some scenes: no TV will be able to play those shots without blinking and, in some cases, blanking out for a few seconds. Color is a lot better, looks really nice much of the time. The "broadcast valid" range is limited to RGB 16-240, with a few points of leeway at each end. Beyond those limits, you encounter levels that encoders and players can't handle. But I think one can see how inconsistent and frustrating VHS tape really is from scene to scene. Looks great for a few shots, then suddenly you get a sequence where everything looks freaky. Tape is absolutely schizo.

[hizzy7]

Oh, NTSC is the final goal, but I am still making myself familiar with avisynth, and trying to figure out the workflow.

If the goal is NTSC:

1) Should I be doing anything in avisynth? Right now, my first step of my workflow is to get rid of the interlacing artifacts, so I am using the VERY amazing QTGMC. The output of my script leaves me with a PAL 25 FPS progressive Lagarith AVI with the NTSC frame size of 704x480.

2) By my understanding I can keep the frame rate of 25 fps, and make this an NTSC DVD by using DGpulldown, as explained by Jagabo:

A) Leave the frame rate 25 fps. Encoded as progressive MPEG 2. Use DgPulldown to apply 3:2:3:2:2 pulldown flags (25 fps to 29.97 fps) to the elementray stream. Import that new M2V into your DVD authoring software along with the original audio. Make a DVD.

I am thinking this is a good workflow:

If you were making a NTSC DVD, leave it as 704x480 or 720x480 . Option A would be to leave it as 25fps (then do whatever filtering, color work you need to, and encode a 704x480, or 720x480 25fps mpeg2 for DVD video, then use dgpulldown on the m2v (uses pulldown flags to output 29.97 interlaced) before authoring the DVD . Don't resize it to 720x576, then back to 720x480 or 704x480 . Resizing back and forth causes avoidable quality loss

Is there an encoder that will let me make an NTSC dvd with 25fps?

Oh, I think this could look alright:

BilinearResize(652,480,18,2,-18,-8)
AddBorders(66,0,66,0)

[jagabo]

I'm kinda lost here. Is the PAL sample in post #54 after you've processed it from the NTSC DVD in post #1?

[sanlyn]

I'm kinda lost here. Is the PAL sample in post #54 after you've processed it from the NTSC DVD in post #1?

My impression is that all of the O.P.'s posts are coming from the same source NTSC VOB's (although the post in #1 is labeled "MPG"). The m2v's were all resized to PAL dimensions. I worked with the original VOB NTSC dimensions from post #1.

Oh, NTSC is the final goal, but I am still making myself familiar with avisynth, and trying to figure out the workflow.

If your goal is NTSC, don't resize for PAL. You'll just have to resize again for NTSC. Multiple resizes are a no-no, especially for damaged and poorly processed video source.

If the goal is NTSC:

1) Should I be doing anything in avisynth? Right now, my first step of my workflow is to get rid of the interlacing artifacts, so I am using the VERY amazing QTGMC. The output of my script leaves me with a PAL 25 FPS progressive Lagarith AVI with the NTSC frame size of 704x480.

You don't have a valid "PAL" video after QTGMC + sRestore. You have a video in its original DVD frame size that cleaned up the improper duplicate and blended images that were poorly processed by the video kamikaze who made the DVD from a PAL VHS tape -- and screwed up the image aspect ratio in the process.

What you have after QTGMC/sRestore is the original 25FPS frame rate in an NTSC formatted frame. The result also has noise and disturbances that can't be fixed in VirtualDub or Premiere. Many of those repairs, including the hot "flashing" thru the video, require Avisynth. It's up to you whether you want to do any further cleaning.

2) By my understanding I can keep the frame rate of 25 fps, and make this an NTSC DVD by using DGpulldown, as explained by Jagabo: ...

Those procedures for 25 -> 29.972 are correct. The problem is that the earlier 25FPS PAL frame rate was apparently arrived at by speeding up the video from 23.976 to 25FPS -- not the best way of making that conversion, but commonly done. The movie was originally filmed at 23.976. Motion will ultimately appear smoother if the original film speed is used with the proper pulldown for NTSC. All that "AssumeFPS(23.972)" does is reverse the process that speeded up the frame rate. For computer-only playback, you could keep the copy with the 23.976 rate.

Is there an encoder that will let me make an NTSC dvd with 25fps?

No. They will allow you to make an MPEG-2 at 25FPS, but it will not be NTSC-DVD compliant because of the frame rate; and it would not be PAL-DVD compliant because of the frame size. It would just be a 25FPS MPEG2.